Schliemann and many of his moling predecessors have dug up and removed the sleeping ancients from what these erroneously believed to be their last resting-places in Asia Minor and the other classic countries, without rebuke, and the funeral urn of an illustrious Roman can be innocently haled from its pigeon-hole in a columbarium. We open the burial mounds of our Indian predecessors and pack off their skulls with never a thought of wrong, and even the bones of our own early settlers when in course of removal to make way for a new city hall are treated with but scant courtesy. There seems to be no statute of limitations applicable to the sanctity of tombs; every case is judged on its merits, with a certain loose regard to local conditions and considerations of expediency.
It was an ancient belief that the shade of even the most worthy deceased could not enter Elysium so long as the body was unburied, but no provision was made for expulsion of those already in if their bodies were exhumed and used as “attractions” for museums. So we may reasonably hope that the companions of Agamemnon contemplate the existence of Schliemanns with philosophic indifference; and doubtless Rameses the Great, who, according to the religion of his country, had an immortality conditioned on the preservation of his mortal part, is as well content that it lie in a museum as in a pyramid.
DETHRONEMENT OF THE ATOM
IT is of course to be expected that the advance of scientific knowledge will destroy, here and there, a cherished illusion. It was so when Darwin showed us that we are not made of mud, but have “just growed.” At least that is what Darwin is by many held to have done, and deep is their resentment. In a general way it may be said that the path of scientific progress is strewn with the mouldering bones of our dearest creations.
To this melancholy company must now be added the precious Atom. It has had a fairly long reign, has the atom; the youths who first worshiped at its shrine are in the lean and slippered pantaloon stage of existence. It will be all the harder for them to see their idol depedestaled.
That the atom was the ultimate unit of matter, the absolute smallest thing in the universe, a fraction incapable of further division—that is what we had been commanded to believe by those in authority over the many things of science. And with such powers of conviction as we are gifted withal we had believed.
Now, what do we hear—what do we hear? Why, that an atom is an aggregation of electrons! These are so much smaller than atoms that the latter can be easily conceived as cut in halves—nay, chopped into hash. Before the inven—that is to say, the discovery—of the electron such a thing as that was unthinkable. So, at each enlargement of the field of knowledge the human mind receives new powers. The time may come when we shall be able (with an effort) to conceive the division of an electron.
The difference in magnitude, or rather minitude, between our old friend the atom and this new though doubtless excellent thing, the other thing, is characteristically expounded thus:
“If an electron is represented by a sphere an inch in diameter, an atom on the same scale is a mile and a half. Or, if an atom is represented by the size of a theater, an electron is represented on the same scale by a printer’s full stop.”